Audio

“Ask Mary to Reign in your Heart”

by Rev. Michael Hurley, O.P. (’99)
Pastor, St. Dominic’s Church, San Francisco
Mass of the Holy Spirit
Thomas Aquinas College
California Convocation
August 22, 2022

By way of introduction, my name is Fr. Michael Hurley. I am an alum, and it’s delightful to be with you today to celebrate this auspicious Convocation, the beginning of the school year.

Last night, when I arrived on campus, I was warmly greeted by Dr. and Mrs. O’Reilly in the Hacienda. I took the occasion to slip into the Guadalupe Chapel. As I walked into the chapel, the first thing that hit me was that it smelled like the chapel at Thomas Aquinas. There’s something about that sense that above all triggers memory. I came in there, and a wave of memories bombarded my mind and my imagination.

I remembered the first time I ever entered into that little chapel down at the Hacienda, 27 years ago, as a freshman. I came, and I got down on my knees — the kneelers seem a little harder these days, or maybe my knees are less flexible. In those days, I came to pour out my heart to Our Lady. I had just begun freshman year, and it was exciting, an adventure, but I felt like I was swimming in the deep end of the pool. I had failed the writing exam — oh boy! I couldn’t have told a Euclid lemma from a lemming. I also remember — this is true confessions! — at the freshman orientation picnic, when someone mentioned that they were so excited to experience Latin, I thought they were making a sly but oblique reference to the chips and salsa. That was my Latin experience!

Last night, I was there, and just thinking about that moment. Subsequently, since in those four years we didn’t have this beautiful place of worship, that chapel became a kind of refuge to bring not only the travails of life, the rigors of those four years, but the triumphs; not only the sorrows, but the joys. And last night, as I was filled with a sense of remembrance, it occurred to me that it wasn’t simply a moment of nostalgia, not simply a moment of remembering the past, but a powerful reminder that we do well to begin any endeavor by having recourse to our Blessed Mother.

Are we beginning a new project? Are we beginning a new year? Are we endeavoring something new? Is God’s presence going to come alive in a new way in our lives? One place to go, the first place, the essential place, the necessary place: to come to Our Lady.

On this Convocation day, when it is right that we celebrate the traditional Mass of the Holy Spirit, we also celebrate, with the Universal Church, the Queenship of Mary, the octave of the Assumption of Our Lady, body and soul, into heaven. We celebrate the culmination, the crowning, the coronation of she who is now queen of heaven and of earth. This morning, I want to reflect briefly on two aspects of the Queenship of Mary that can help us to help you, to help this college, begin well, to begin this new year in a fruitful way. I want to take two different images to unpack the power of the Blessed Mother, queen of heaven.

The first image, before mentioned: Our Lady of Guadalupe. In some ways it’s a capital-S sacramental the Church has been given, because it’s not an artist’s depiction. We, of course, have no physical description in the Scriptures. But the tilma is — what? We believe it is that miraculous gift of Mary to the Church. It’s how Mary has chosen to reveal herself, if you will, to all of us. I won’t get into unpacking the fullness of the miracle of the tilma, but it really is living. It shouldn’t exist, it shouldn’t still be with us, and yet it is, and there are all sorts of wonderful connections and characteristics of the tilma. But the point is that in the tilma we see a connection between the Queenship of Mary and her role as our mother. Mary is our queen precisely because she is our mother.

It's interesting that early depictions of Our Lady of Guadalupe will often have a crown on them — in fact, there’s one in the Hacienda. It symbolizes her queenship. I had the great privilege a week or two ago to celebrate, with the whole Dominican chapter in Mexico City, on the feast of holy father Dominic, a Mass at the Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe. If you’ve never been to the Basilica, put it on your bucket list. Definitely recommend — a powerful place of pilgrimage and of prayer. What I noticed is above the tilma is a beautiful crown symbolizing Mary’s queenship.

And this is connected to the Scriptures. We know in ancient Israel, who is the queen? Oftentimes it’s not the spouse of the king, for various reasons, some practical, and others … well, kings have many wives, like David and Solomon. Your queen is going to be a figurehead, or ceremonial, unless there’s a greater source of unity. As we know, Scripturally, the one who had the power of the queen was who? The mother of the king. Mary, insofar as she is mother to the King of Kings, is queen.

Juan Diego would have known this, because she is dressed as a princess, as royalty. He would have immediately got the connection: “The person who I am encountering is not just some common person, it is royalty, royalty in every way.” And so what does this queen do and ask of Juan Diego, and ask of us? Well, she simply reassures us as a mother. If you know the story, you know that she appears, she asks Juan to be an advocate, to have a great basilica — a place of healing, unity, and prayer for all peoples —be built. And he says, “I’m not the right person! I don’t have the social connections, I don’t have the political connections. I’m the wrong person!” His fears are, perhaps, confirmed when the bishop says, to paraphrase, “Don’t call us, we’ll call you.” He puts him off. And then, to top it all off, his uncle becomes gravely ill. And so he avoids the place she appeared to him before — he literally walks around the mountain in Mexico City. And in that moment, we have the message of Guadalupe, the queen, the mother. She says, “My little Juanito, Diegito, am I not your mother? Are you not under my care and protection? Do not be afraid. Do not be anxious. Am I not the source of your joy?”

Precisely because she is queen, she can be our mother. As mother to the king, her queenship gives us a kind of intimacy to her maternal care for us. As you begin this school year, then, have recourse to Mary, queen of the world and mother of your life.

This leads to the second image, perhaps more proximate to the specific goal of this college, and that is faith seeking understanding, in its most general sense. Last night, as I exited from that Guadalupe Chapel, I noticed something that I hadn’t ever really noticed before — I don’t know if the light just hit it right; I don’t even know if it was there 27 years ago. I noticed a bronze icon of Our Lady Seat of Wisdom. A Byzantine almond-shaped presence of divinity, and there Mary is as queen. And because she is queen, she is the seat of wisdom, the place of all intellectual illumination, insofar as wisdom is both a moral virtue, a cardinal virtue; but also a supernatural, a gift of the Holy Spirit. She is an image for precisely what this college is all about, the pursuit of wisdom, the pursuit of nothing less than the truth. All of your academic endeavors, as students, as tutors, as those who are involved in administration, whatever your specific role or vocation is at this college, it is in pursuit of what? Wisdom. Who better to lead us to that wisdom than Mary, the very place, the very seat of wisdom?

Make no mistake. What’s the Gospel about? What does Jesus say? He says, “Father, I give you praise.” Why? “Because you have made it hard to find wisdom,” to paraphrase. The pursuit of wisdom is difficult. Those who think they are wise and learned, guess what? They end up with a kind of opinion, they end up with buzzwords and fads. They don’t end up with the presence of truth, which is not just an idea; wisdom, which is not just thought, but which is a person. The truth is a person. Wisdom is the discovery, the encounter with the person of Our Lord, Jesus Christ. And so He says, “Blessed are you who see, and many longed to see but didn’t see it. Blessed are you who hear.” So how can we hear, how can we see?

We go to the Blessed Mother, seat of wisdom, because that’s where the Lord is. Put it this way: In the pursuit of wisdom, we seek the seat of wisdom precisely because God Himself sought Mary herself to be the place of His incarnate wisdom.

I’m just noticing this now: We have an image of Mary Seat of Wisdom as you exit the Chapel. From here, it has almost Guadalupian colors and the crown. As we, in this place, worship the Lord, as we are fed by the Lord, we have recourse to the Blessed Virgin Mary, queen of heaven and earth, mother, and seat of wisdom. As you depart from this place, as you’re filled the Holy Spirit and the living bread of angels, glance up and invoke Our Lady to be your queen. Ask her to reign in your heart. Dedicate this year under the auspices of her mantle. Let her be your mother. Let her help us to seek for the fullness of wisdom.

Amen.

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